The annual National Prisoner Census, conducted on the night of 30 June, counts all people held in Australian prisons that are in the legal custody of adult corrective services, including periodic detainees in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, but excluding persons held in juvenile institutions, psychiatric custody and police custody. At any given point in time, most prisoners are serving long sentences for relatively serious offences, but the flow of offenders in and out of prisons consists primarily of people serving short sentences for less serious offences.

At 30 June 2008, there were 27,615 prisoners (sentenced and unsentenced) in Australian adult prisons. This represented an imprisonment rate of 169 prisoners per 100,000 adult population. Of the total prisoner population, 93% (25,658) were men and 7% (1,957) were women.

Most (55% or 15,154) prisoners had served time in an adult prison prior to the current episode.

Acts intended to cause injury was the most serious offence/charge which accounted for the largest proportion of adult prisoners (18% or 5,008 prisoners).

There were 6,706 Indigenous prisoners at 30 June 2008, comprising 24% of the total prisoner population. The age-standardised Indigenous imprisonment rate was 1,769 prisoners per 100,000 adult Indigenous population, 13 times more than the non-Indigenous rate (133 prisoners per 100,000 adult non-Indigenous population) (table 13.23).

The median age of male prisoners was 33 years, and 34 years for female prisoners.

There were notable differences in some most serious offence types for which men and women were imprisoned. Though similar proportions of male and female prisoners had homicide and related offences as their most serious offence (10% and 11% respectively), the proportion of male prisoners was higher than that for women prisoners for sexual assault and related offences (14% of male prisoners, 2% of female prisoners) and robbery, extortion and related offences (10% of male prisoners, 6% of female prisoners). There were higher proportions of women prisoners than male prisoners for the following offence types: deception and related offences (12% of women prisoners, 3% of male prisoners); and illicit drug offences (15% of women prisoners, 9% of male prisoners) (graph 13.26).

Aggregate length of sentence is derived by taking into account the longest period for which a convicted prisoner may be detained as a result of a sentence or sentences imposed by a criminal court for an offence or multiple offences in a current episode.

At 30 June 2008, the average aggregate sentence length for all adult prisoners sentenced to a specific term was 59.1 months or nearly 5 years, while the average expected time to serve was 42.3 months or 3.5 years. The average aggregate sentence length excludes prisoners who receive indeterminate, life with a minimum, or periodic detention sentences, whilst the expected time to serve takes into account the earliest date of release for sentenced prisoners (graph 13.27).

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) collects information from each state and territory on behalf of the Australasian Juvenile Justice Administrators about the numbers and characteristics of young people under the supervision of juvenile justice agencies.

Excluding New South Wales, in 2007-08, 3,378 young people were held in juvenile detention. Most detainees (84%) were male. Just under half of the young detainee population were identified as Indigenous. Note, a young person may have been in custody more than once during the reference period (table 13.28).

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